For more than 100 years after the Treaty of
Limerick (1691) -- a period later called the "Age of Penal Laws" or
"Protestant Ascendancy" -- Ireland was a powder keg of social unrest
due to a repressive and apartheid-like society in which a small Anglican
minority (10% of the population) used its ownership of land and its control of
government to deny power, influence and civil rights to Catholics (75% of the
population) and to a lesser degree to Presbyterians (15%). Nevertheless,
despite serious tensions that constantly threatened to erupt into widespread
violence -- rich versus poor, landlord versus tenant, Catholic versus Protestant
-- Ireland was able to avoid open revolution. Then in 1782 England, while still
reeling from the American Revolution, permitted Ireland to evolve into a
semi-autonomous (but still repressive) "Protestant Nation", a peaceful
transition that contrasted dramatically with the violent Revolutions in America
(1775-83) and in France (1789-99). Finally, the Rebellion of 1798, a modest and
wildly unsuccessful rising led by Presbyterians, triggered a 180 degree change
of direction: The Irish Parliament disavowed its autonomy and entered into a
"union" (merger) with England (1800) that nearly destroyed Ireland's
separate identity. (back to top)

Almost immediately after the
Treaty of Limerick (1691), Anglicans took decisive action to further strengthen
their dominant position. Notwithstanding the Treaty, the Irish and English
Parliaments, both dominated by Anglicans, enacted a series of "Penal
Laws" (a.k.a. the "Popery Code") which, apartheid-like,
created a three tier, Anglican controlled society in which (1) Catholics (75% of
the population) would be totally excluded from property and power, and (2)
Presbyterians (15% of the population) would remain subordinate to Anglicans.
Catholics and Presbyterians alike were required to tithe to
the Anglican Church of Ireland, but were officially barred from government
employment and military commissions. Catholics alone were barred from elective
office, from entering the legal profession, from bearing arms, and from owning a
horse worth more than five pounds. Upon the death of a Catholic landlord, his
property by law went to his sons in equal shares, unless one of them converted
to Anglicanism, in which case the Anglican son received the entire property,
along with the right to immediately wrest management from his parents. Catholics
were prohibited from purchasing realty, except leases of less than 31 years.
(Between 1701 and 1778 Catholic ownership of land further declined from 14% to
5%). Catholics were barred from educating their children (except in schools
proselytizing for the Anglican religion). Catholic bishops were banned from
Ireland (under penalty of death by hanging, disemboweling and quartering). The
last of the Penal Laws, enacted in 1727, denied Catholics the right to vote.
In enacting the Penal Laws, the Parliament of England was
motivated almost entirely by anti-Catholic animus, but the Parliament of Ireland
had additional motivation: preserving the privileged position of the New English
"haves" vis-a-vis the native "have nots". William and Mary
initially opposed the "Penal Laws" as violative of the Treaty, but
religious freedom for Catholics was not the highest priority for William, and
the Crown soon acquiesced. Except for the Cromwellian era (1649-60), the
period 1692-1740 was the most anti-Catholic in Irish history. However,
anti-Catholic animus peaked in the mid-1730s, then gradually subsided over the
next 130 years, as anti-Catholic laws were gradually repealed, one by one.
The Penal Laws helped create the misnamed "Protestant
Ascendancy", which would have been more accurately called "Anglican
Dominance". Under it, all of society, and certainly all of government, was
dominated by an elitist aristocracy consisting exclusively of Anglicans. The
stereotypical Ascendancy gentleman attended Trinity College, lived a
hard-drinking, party-oriented life of luxury in a "big house", pursued
a respectable professional career in law, government, education or the military,
and above all, collected high rents from his Irish tenants. But he also was
insecure. His prosperity and privilege were rooted in land confiscations which,
if the old line Irish ever regained control, were likely to be overturned. And
he knew full well that British troops were critical in keeping the old line
Irish in check.The vast majority of Catholics lived and worked on the
farm in abject poverty, degradation and despair, with no way out. Their diet
consisted almost entirely of the newly introduced potato, plus milk (with a
herring once or twice a year). Shelter, if any, was a mud hovel with leaky roof
and no windows or chimney. Even Catholics who labored full time lived in worse
degradation than the poorest beggars elsewhere in Europe. A handful of Catholics
achieved middle class prosperity in business -- and their numbers grew as time
went by -- but they were exceptions. In terms of compliance with law, Catholics
were made criminals under the Penal Laws because they refused to turn in their
"illegal" priests, and the draconian injustice of these laws
engendered in them a culture of disrespect for the law generally.
Presbyterians congregated in Ulster, where typically they
adhered to the culture (and religion) brought over from Scotland by their
ancestors. Close knit and industrious, they responded to discrimination by
distancing themselves from Ascendancy culture, becoming a self reliant community
within the larger society. The typical Presbyterian pursued a middle class
livelihood in the linen business or in farming.
Anglicans and Presbyterians soon found themselves in serious
conflict. The principal problem was that the "established" Church of
Ireland, and its Anglican members, treated the Presbyterian Religion as a second
class religion, and its members (who generally were less affluent than
Anglicans) as second class citizens. Although Presbyterians were treated far
better than Catholics -- there were no restrictions on the right to own realty
or to bear arms -- they were required to tithe to the Anglican Church of
Ireland, and were prohibited from holding government office or military
commissions. Many emigrated to America where their descendants served with
distinction in George Washington's Revolutionary army.
The Ascendancy also resented Mother England's insistence upon
treating Ireland as a subservient colony, useful primarily for enhancing the
prosperity of England. British trade legislation, which typically discriminated
against Ireland, was particularly grating. For example, in order to protect
English manufacturers, the English Parliament prohibited the export of Irish
woolen goods to any country except England, where prohibitive duties made such
trade unprofitable. This legislation literally destroyed the Irish woolen
industry, to the dismay of merchants of all religions. The Ascendancy lobbied
constantly for a more balanced alliance, something akin to an equal partnership,
provided it could be attained without losing England's military protection. But
no serious effort was made to address this problem in the first half of the 18th
Century, and even within the Ascendancy, discontent was rampant. (back
to top)

In the latter half of the 18th
Century, the Western World was permanently changed by two major
"revolutions": (1) The Industrial Revolution, in which labor saving
machines, both on farms and in factories, permitted the "necessities"
to be produced with far less manpower, thereby freeing surplus manpower to be
used in the production of non-necessities, and (2) A series of violent populist
revolutions -- exemplified by the American Revolution (1775-83) and the French
Revolution (1789-99) -- which erupted against colonial empires and undemocratic
governments. Ireland was not totally exempt from either revolution.The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the
1760s, bypassed most of Ireland, but it took root and flourished in and around
Belfast, which became the linen center of the world, and the industrial center
of Ireland. For the northeast, industrialization meant prosperity, along
with stronger export and economic ties with Britain, but it also brought the
start of urban problems commonly associated with industrialization:
overcrowding, pollution, communicable disease, etc. By late century, Ulster
Protestants – particularly Presbyterians – had become more convinced than
ever that "Ulster is different from the rest of Ireland", based on the
indisputable facts that (1) whereas the rest of Ireland was 80% or more
Irish-Catholic, Ulster had a British-Protestant majority, or near majority, with
Presbyterians outnumbering Anglicans by far, and (2) whereas the rest of Ireland
remained largely agrarian, Ulster to a significant degree had become
industrialized. This culture of "separateness" persisted into the 20th
Century and drove the partition compromise of 1910-22.
Throughout all of Ireland in the 1760s, the long simmering
tensions -- landlord versus tenant, rich versus poor, Catholic versus
Presbyterian versus Anglican -- began to surface, primarily in rural areas.
Secret societies were formed which became governments unto themselves. They
ignored duly enacted law and established their own agendas -- primarily
anti-landlord, secondarily anti-government and/or anti-tithe – which were
enforced through organized violence, principally against landlords and their
allies. (The violence euphemistically was called "land wars" by some,
"agrarian outrages" by others.) Membership tended to be from a single
religion, but religious warfare did not erupt until later in the century, when
Catholics and Protestants began to compete for leases. Public attention fell
principally on the Catholic societies, the "Whiteboys" and
"Defenders", but Protestant societies, the "Hearts of Oak",
"Steelboys", and "Peep o' Day Boys", were equally effective.
Some policy makers thought there might be a partial
legislative solution to the unrest. In the 1760s, the "Patriot"
movement led by Henry Gratton (an affluent and pro-business Anglican),
professing loyalty to the King but demanding greater autonomy for Ireland plus
concessions to Catholics, emerged as an influential minority in the Irish
Parliament. As a result of Gratton's advocacy, a few of the Penal Laws were
repealed in the 1770s.
The American Revolution erupted in 1776, triggering obvious
comparisons between the situation of the American colonies and that of Ireland.
It also forced the reassignment of British troops from Ireland to America. This
led to the formation of the "Irish Volunteers", a militia (consisting
almost entirely of well armed Anglicans) which ostensibly was formed to defend
Ireland but which was used adroitly by Gratton to intimidate the British
government.
In 1782, while still negotiating a surrender in the American
Revolutionary War, England handed Gratton his greatest achievement.
"Gratton's Parliament" (backed by the armed "Irish
Volunteers") persuaded the British government to amend English law
(including Poynings's Law) to give the Irish Parliament full legislative
independence, including the right to enact its own trade and tariff policies.
Conventional wisdom among Ascendancy gentlemen was that Ireland had been
transformed peacefully into a nearly autonomous "Protestant Nation",
but this was a gross exaggeration, since the Crown had retained all executive
power, including power over patronage, plus the right to veto legislation of the
Irish Parliament.
Legislative independence nevertheless was a triumph for the
Protestant Ascendancy, which had long sought greater legislative autonomy,
particularly in matter of trade. The Ascendancy thus reacted with pride and
satisfaction which manifested itself in visible signs of sovereignty such as an
independent Bank of Ireland, a separate Irish postal service, and new government
buildings including the Custom House and the Four Courts.
But independence for a Parliament responsive only to the
Protestant Ascendancy did little or nothing for the angry lower and middle
classes, either Presbyterian or Catholic. Presbyterian tenant-farmers, generally
middle class, had grievances over the mandatory tithe, certain penal laws, a
wide variety of landlord abuses, and a non-representative Irish Parliament.
Poverty stricken Catholics had all these grievances, and many more. Thus
Catholics and less affluent Presbyterians, who together made up 90% of the
population, found themselves on the same side of the major issues of the day:
land reform, Parliamentary reform, elimination of the tithe, and repeal of those
penal laws affecting both. Religious differences historically had precluded
joint political action, but some radical reformers were beginning to see
potential in a Catholic-Presbyterian political alliance.
In 1789, the French Revolution impacted Ireland like a bomb,
igniting existing tensions and pushing Ireland toward similar violent
revolution. In France, the peasant and middle classes had risen up to topple the
government (and to behead the king and queen), to oust the established Church
(and to confiscate its property), to abolish tithes, religious discrimination
and privilege, and to institute a democratic republic dedicated to liberty and
equality. (The French Revolution's first stage was widely admired; but its later
stages, particularly the infamous "Reign of Terror", were almost
universally deplored.) Now it was becoming clear that the status quo in Ireland
could not be maintained, and that radical change was inevitable.
Among intellectuals, Parliamentary reform topped the list of
demands for change. Not only were Catholics legally barred from serving, but
only freeholders (owners and life tenants in land) could vote, and voting
districts were not of equal size or population. Some voting districts -- called
"pocket boroughs" or "rotten boroughs" -- had only one or
two eligible voters. Among 300 seats in Commons, a majority -- more than 150
seats -- were controlled by only 30 landowners. Ironically, this worked to
benefit the Crown, which used patronage jobs and pensions to induce the
individuals in control -- called "undertakers" -- to undertake to
enact the Crown's agenda. At any one time, between one-third and two-thirds of
the Irish Parliament was receiving a salary or pension from the Crown.
Theobald Wolf Tone, an Anglican of modest social standing and
the founder of radical republicanism in Ireland, was profoundly influenced by
the French Revolution. To Tone, the key to a better Ireland was Parliamentary
reform (i.e., a popularly elected one-man-one-vote legislature), and the key to
Parliamentary reform was an alliance between Catholics and less affluent
Presbyterians. Ultimately, Tone's vision for Ireland was a democratic republic,
patterned after the post-revolutionary French Republic; it would be totally
independent from England, governed by a popularly elected one-man-one-vote type
legislature, and free from religious discrimination and preferences. In 1791,
with the assistance of Napper Tandy, Tone founded the Society of United
Irishmen, which originally was formed as a "debating society"
peacefully advocating Protestant-Catholic cooperation to achieve parliamentary
reform and Catholic emancipation. United Irishmen quickly gained wide support
from Ulster Presbyterians, and modest support from some Catholics.
The post-revolution French government declared war on England
in 1793. Hoping to secure the loyalty of rebellious Catholics, the British
government pressured the reluctant Irish Parliament to repeal some penal laws
and to grant Catholics the right to vote* (1793).
But unrest did not subside. Instead it escalated in the form
of sectarian violence. The "Battle of the Diamond" (1795) near Armagh,
which pitted Presbyterian Peep o' Day Boys against Catholic Defenders, left 20
dead. That same evening, Ulster Protestants formed the "Orange Order",
a society of affluent and middle class Protestants who pledged support for the
Protestant Ascendancy and confrontation with Catholics. Over the next few
months, thousand of Catholics were driven out of Ulster by widespread and
systematic violence.
About 1794, Tone crossed over the line, converting from
advocate of peaceful Parliamentary reform to violent revolutionary. About the
same time, the United Irishmen became a para-military force. In 1796, Tone
convinced France to invade Ireland as part of its war effort against England. A
French fleet carrying 14,000 troops set sail for Ireland, but as luck would have
it, bad weather prevented a landing, and the fleet returned to France.
All of the powder kegs now seemed ready to explode at once.
An anti-government revolution (ala the French Revolution) seemed imminent.
Religious warfare already had erupted at Diamond, and seemed likely to spread.
Rural violence against landlords was escalating. And a second French invasion of
Ireland was expected at any time.
The government responded with a campaign to disarm the
populace (1797). Initially the campaign was directed principally at Ulster
Presbyterians -- Catholics already were legally prohibited from bearing arms --
but later it was expanded to include all but a handful of counties. The campaign
was conducted by General Gerard Lake, who used brutal tactics with little or no
restraint. Suspects against whom little evidence existed, many of them innocent,
were flogged and tortured to force them to reveal information, hundreds were
forced into the British navy as slave laborers, and numerous houses were burned.
Lake's campaign was spectacularly successful in disarming the populace,
particularly in Ulster, but it also inspired rumors -- widely believed by
Catholics -- that disarmament was the first step in a joint campaign by the
Orange Order and the Irish government to solve the "Catholic problem"
by massacring the entire Catholic population of Ireland. Tone's followers
shrewdly exploited the rumored massacre to persuade some local Defender units to
merge into, and became the Catholic wing of, the Presbyterian dominated United
Irishmen.
In 1798, Tone and the United Irishmen again persuaded France
to invade Ireland. The plan included coordination of the French invasion with a
series of local rebellions. When an informer disclosed the plot, the rebels were
forced to start early. The insurrection in Ulster, led by Henry Joy McCracken,
was almost entirely Presbyterian, while the ones in Dublin, Kildare, Carlow,
Meath and Queen's were nonsectarian. All of these risings were serious matters,
but because disarmament had been successful, all were efficiently quashed.
The rebellion in Wexford was far more serious, one of the
bloodiest confrontations in Irish history. Wexford was an unlikely prospect for
insurrection -- no more than 300 United Irishmen and Defenders were operating
there -- but violence erupted when Protestant Volunteers, directed to enforce
the disarmament order, began flogging Catholics and burning their homes even
before the date specified for surrendering arms. Then a Catholic killed a
soldier who had burned a barn, and government forces retaliated by burning down
another 160 houses. Fully believing that a massacre of Catholics was imminent,
Catholics rebelled. Led by Father John Murphy, and armed with little more than
pikes against government forces with muskets, the rebels initially took
Enniscorthy, then sought to expand into Wicklow. Mass atrocities occurred on
both sides. In the end, the rebels were routed at Vinegar Hill (1798). Some
historians regard Wexford as an extension of Tone's United Irish rebellion, but
elsewhere in Ireland, the perception was that Wexford was a Catholic war against
Protestants. This triggered bitter religious animosities, and destroyed (perhaps
forever) Tone's dream of a political alliance between Catholics and less
affluent Presbyterians.
The local uprisings all had already been suppressed when
French warships arrived (with Wolf Tone aboard) and were forced to surrender.
Tone was captured, convicted, and sentenced to death. Tone demanded to be shot
while wearing his uniform, like a soldier and prisoner of war; the government
insisted on hanging him, like a common criminal. He died in prison apparently
from self inflicted wounds, almost certainly a suicide.
Despite the effective suppression of the local risings,
England's Prime Minister, William Pitt, considered Irish unrest one of the
greatest threats to England in history. Thus he revived a long discarded idea.
He sponsored legislation (entitled "Act of Union") calling for the
"union" (or merger) of England and Ireland into a single "United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" with a single Parliament. To garner
Catholic support, Pitt promised Catholics the right to sit in Parliament
("emancipation"); but out of 658 seats in the new Parliament, Ireland
would have only 100, and Catholics could expect to fill 70 to 75 seats at most.
Pitt's proposal was one of the most far reaching in Irish history. If adopted,
it would totally reverse the Gratton Parliament's most popular achievement,
legislative independence. Gratton vigorously opposed union, as did Ulster
Presbyterians, the business community, parish priests and nationalists; in favor
were the British government, Catholic bishops and absentee landlords. The
proposal certainly would have failed in a popular vote or in a representative
parliament, but the vote fell to the non-representative Irish Parliament.When the "Act of Union" was voted
on the first time (1799), it failed by only five votes; later (1800), after
Pitt's deputy in Ireland had bribed some members by offering peerages and
lifetime seats in the British House of Lords, the measure passed the
all-Protestant Irish Parliament, and was quickly ratified by the English
Parliament. In a betrayal of Catholics, Pitt's promise of Catholic emancipation
was defeated in a separate follow-up vote, leading Pitt to resign. After only
eighteen years as a semi-autonomous country, Ireland, by the vote of its own
Parliament, had been subsumed into England. (back
to top)

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847),
a Catholic advocate of non-violent and lawful political action, emerged in the
early 1800s as the sole leader of the great masses of peasant and middle class
Catholics, who comprised the vast majority of the Irish population. O'Connell
dominated Irish history and politics in the first half of the 19th Century like
no other single person ever had dominated a half century. This indeed was the
"Age of Daniel O'Connell".O'Connell's principal achievement was
organizing previously dispirited Catholics into an extraordinary political
machine which impacted England (and Ireland) for almost 100 years. Long after
his death, the political machine was still able to exert disproportionate
influence in the British Parliament, particularly when neither major party had
the votes to form a government, or pass controversial legislation, without the
Catholic voting block.The emergence of a Catholic leader provides
stark contrast to 18th Century Irish history, which is essentially the story of
Protestants giants -- Wolf Tone, Henry Gratton, and Jonathan Swift -- agitating
both peacefully and violently for greater independence from England, and for
greater civil rights for the oppressed. However, within a few years after the
Union, Presbyterians* and Anglicans alike had become pillars of the Union and
had virtually disappeared from history books.O'Connell first attracted attention as
leader of an unsuccessful 1804-07 movement for "emancipation". The
issue: Even though Catholics had been granted the right to vote in 1793, they
still were prohibited by law from serving in Parliament.
"Emancipation" was the term given to repeal of this prohibition, which
(as the most notorious of the remaining penal laws) held great symbolic
significance**.O'Connell made a genuine impact in 1823 when
he founded the "Catholic Association". Earlier Catholic societies had
been for the affluent and the elite, but the Catholic Association aimed for, and
actually attained, grass roots mass membership. It used parish priests to
solicit members, and most important of all, it charged a membership fee of one
penny per month, which became known as "catholic rent." The amount was
so low that even the poorest could afford it, but for their penny, the masses
soon came to believe in the association as an empowering institution in which
they had a genuine stake.By 1826, O'Connell's Catholic Association
began to flex previously unused Catholic muscle. The first goal, naturally, was
emancipation. The association enacted a policy to actively oppose, and vote en
mass against, any candidate who was anti-emancipation, or who joined the cabinet
of an anti-emancipation government. In the general elections of 1826, as the
result of an impressive get-out-the-vote drive funded by Catholic rents and
supported by many priests, four sitting anti-emancipation members of Parliament
were turned out and replaced by pro-emancipation Protestants. O'Connell
immediately began to fine-tune his strategy for a truly massive campaign in the
next general election.Before the next general election arrived,
however, Vesey Fitzgerald, who had represented Clare in Parliament for ten
years, was appointed to the cabinet. Under the law at that time, he was required
to stand for reelection at a special election in 1928. Fitzgerald personally was
pro-emancipation, and certainly no enemy of Catholics, but he had joined a
government that was anti-emancipation, thereby requiring the Association, as a
matter of policy, to oppose him. Fitzgerald was so strong that O'Connell could
not find any Protestant to run against him. O'Connell therefore declared himself
a candidate, thus exploiting a loophole in the election law. Specifically,
although the law clearly prohibited Catholics from being sworn in as a Member of
Parliament, it did not explicitly prohibit Catholics from filing as a candidate
and running for election.The election results shocked Parliament.
O'Connell won by more than a two to one margin (2,057 to 982) over the well
respected Fitzgerald, largely because of O'Connell's now highly effective
political machine.Parliament reacted quickly. To avoid the
disorders that were expected to follow its refusal to seat O'Connell, Parliament
in 1829 passed legislation that not only granted Catholic Emancipation, but
repealed virtually all of the remaining Penal Laws as well.As a member of Parliament, O'Connell played
a significant role in several modest reforms for Ireland. The tithe was
restructured as a less ideologically offensive rental charge, the number of
eligible voters was expanded, corruption in municipal government was addressed,
and some modest land reforms were enacted. Overall, though, O'Connell was
disappointed at how little he could achieve with his bloc of Irish votes in
Commons.Thus in 1837, O'Connell launched his second
great agitation: a grass roots campaign to repeal the Act of Union of 1800. Now
a proven organizational genius and compelling orator, O'Connell devised his
campaign strategy around "monster" grass roots political
demonstrations, which were to be both non-violent and in full conformity with
law. O'Connell believed these demonstrations would call worldwide attention to
the injustice of the bribe infected vote in 1800 on the Act of Union, and
pressure Parliament into "Repeal".The demonstrations were enormous, and indeed
caught the attention of the government. During 1843, more than 40 monster
meetings were held and many attracted crowds in excess of 100,000. One
demonstration, at Tara, drew 250,000. As Repeal fever approached its peak,
O'Connell scheduled what was to be the largest demonstration of all, at Clontarf
in October 1843. Only a few hours before the Clontarf demonstration, however,
the government issued an order banning the protest. O'Connell thus faced a
dilemma by virtue of his own long held insistence that all demonstrations be in
full conformity with law.Much to the dismay of his militant young
supporters -- who were called "Young Ireland" -- O'Connell called off
the demonstration. Unfortunately for O'Connell, then age 68, this triggered
acrimonious debates during which the young militants challenged O'Connell on a
variety of long suppressed but highly divisive issues, including whether
violence ever could be justified. O'Connell's Catholic Association already was
on the verge of fracture when the Great Hunger (1845-48), a.k.a. potato famine,
diverted attention away from grass roots politics. Four years after Clontarf, in
1847, O'Connell was dead at age 72.O'Connell was a pioneer in using lawful and
non-violent demonstrations to energize and organize his followers. Later
advocates of peaceful protest -- Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King --
borrowed his tactics, but they also learned from his experience that a protest
movement cannot be so dedicated to conforming with law that it acquiesces in a
government declaration that a peaceful protest is illegal. If demonstrations
(O'Connell's principal weapon) always had to be lawful, the government could and
would always win, simply by banning demonstrations. (back
to top)

The holocaust formerly called "Potato
Famine" was not a genuine "famine" at all, because only the
potato crop was affected, while the vast majority of farmland was planted to
other crops and foodstuffs which were grown in sufficient quantities -- or at
least nearly sufficient quantities* -- to feed the populace. Hence the human
tragedy -- one million dead -- is now more accurately called the "Great
Hunger" ("An Gorta Mor" in Irish/Gaelic). Whatever it is called,
the disaster resulted from (1) the fungus that totally ravaged the potato crop
in 1845, 1846 and 1848, and partially ravaged it in 1847, and (2) government
indifference. It not only devastated the Irish people of 1845-49, it had
profound long term effects on Ireland, effects that remain to this day.
Specifically:

--Before the Great Hunger, the population of
Ireland was 8.5 million. Afterwards, the population was only 6.5 million, a
decline of two million (23.5%) in four years. About half of the decline was due
to death by starvation or some associated disease (cholera, typhus) which became
fatal in the conditions of malnutrition. The other half of the population
decline was due to emigration, principally to the United States, but even among
those officially classified as "emigrants", a staggering number
actually died at sea on the "coffin ships"**. Even after the famine,
emigration continued, as Irish newly arrived in the United States urged family
and friends to follow them. By 1881, the Irish population had declined to 5
million; by 1921 (partition), to slightly over 4 million.

--Before the Hunger, Gaelic was the principal
language among Catholics. Afterwards, English became the predominant language,
largely because death and emigration hit hardest in the poorest areas where
Gaelic was most common; the Gaelic speaking Counties of Mayo and Kerry, for
example, lost half their populations.

--Before the Hunger, early marriages and large
families were integral to Irish culture. Afterwards, late marriages and smaller
families became the norm. It became an axiom that man should not marry and have
children until he had saved sufficient money to weather a disaster.

--The trend toward late marriage dove-tailed with
a "devotional revolution" characterized by greater compliance strict
Catholic teaching on sexual morality, increased attendance at Catholic mass,
expanded church building, and a dramatic increase in the number of priests and
nuns.

–Before the Hunger, a full 45% of farmland was
held in inefficient farms of 5 acres or less, while only 7% was in farms of 30
acres or more. Afterwards, sub-5 acre farms dropped to 15%, while the more
efficient farms of 30 acres or more increased to 26%. Thus the Hunger forced a
much more efficient agricultural economy, but at the terrible price of one
million dead and even more emigrated.

--Before the Great Hunger, political sentiment
ran towards abstract ideas, such as repeal of the Union. Afterwards, the
electorate focused on "bread and butter" issues such as agrarian
reform.

The cause of the crop failures, we now know, was
a fungus called phytophthora infestans, also known as potato blight. It had
struck the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada in 1842, and England
in 1845, but had caused no great distress. In Ireland, however, it spelled
disaster. In September 1845, the potato blight hit Waterford and Wexford, then
spread rapidly until about half the island was affected. It hit hard again in
1846, less hard in 1847, then again destroyed the crop in 1848.

What is shocking about the famine is that
throughout this entire four year period of starvation, Ireland was exporting
enormous quantities of food. Indeed, up to 75% of the soil was devoted to wheat,
oats, barley and other crops which were grown for export, and which were
actually exported, all while the populace starved.

The problem was that about half the population --
all wretchedly poor -- worked on farms not for cash wages, but for the right to
grow potatoes on tiny plots. They lived on a subsistence diet consisting almost
exclusively of potatoes and milk, with a herring once or twice a year. When the
potato crop failed, these peasants had neither food for their families, nor cash
to buy other food***. Initially, only the poor died, victims of starvation. Then
as typically happens in conditions of starvation, epidemics of typhus and
cholera broke out, felling the affluent along with the poor. In toto, about one
million died.

When the first signs of the crop failure appeared
in 1845, Britain's Tory government under Prime Minister Robert Peel took modest
initiatives to alleviate the distress. It paid half the cost of jobs for about
140,000 family heads on public works, which (to protect English business) were
required by law to be non-productive, and it matched local voluntary
contributions to hunger relief. It also imported large quantities of Indian corn
and meal from the United States; incredibly, however, the government refused to
distribute this food free, instead placing it on the market at low prices to
prevent artificial increases in food prices.

Peel firmly opposed more radical measures. The
starvation very likely could have been averted entirely by legislation
prohibiting the export of food from Ireland; and any hardship on growers could
have been avoided by legislation authorizing purchase of their grain using
borrowed money, with repayment to be made over a period of years from increased
agricultural taxes. But feeding the populace by interfering with exports was
never seriously considered by Peel's government, in part because the expense
might fall on the growers and/or the public treasury. Instead, Peel used the
famine as an opportunity to push through his favored but controversial proposal:
Repeal of the protectionist "corn laws", which imposed stiff tariffs
on grain (including but not limited to corn) brought in from outside the United
Kingdom. Repeal of the "corn laws" reduced food prices (as Peel
intended), but did nothing to alleviate the hunger, since the starving poor
could not afford food whatever the price.

The controversial repeal of the "corn
laws" helped topple Peel's Tory government in June 1846. The Tories were
replaced by an even less compassionate Whig government under Lord John Russell,
who delegated the potato blight problem to Charles Trevelyan, the career civil
service Head of Treasury. At this point, although people were hungry, no one yet
had died. But the Whigs (and Trevelyan personally) were committed to the trendy
Manchester school of economics, which regarded the suffering of the poor as part
of the natural order of things, and prohibited government meddling in the
operation of otherwise free markets. The Whig government decided that in the
event of another crop failure, there would be no direct relief from the British
treasury; instead, relief would be limited to public works jobs funded entirely
by Irish self-taxation.

There was indeed a second failure, in autumn
1846, and this time it was complete. Making matters worse, the winter of 1846-47
was the harshest in living memory. Now the dying began. The suffering reached
its peak in February 1847, when hundreds of thousands of homeless, freezing and
starving peasants left the farms for the towns, hoping for employment in public
works, which already had hired 500,000 family heads. Cholera and typhus then
broke out, and some died from disease, some of starvation, and some froze to
death, hundreds of thousands in all. Finally, the Whig government was forced to
relent and extend some direct aid through the "Soup Kitchen Act"
providing free soup to the starving. This was augmented by charity from the
Quakers and other private groups. The aid was too little and too late, as
hundreds of thousands more perished, and Ireland literally ran out of coffins.
When sailing weather arrived, panic emigration started in earnest.

Blight hit less hard in the autumn of 1847, but
this simply furnished the British government with a convenient excuse for
closing down the soup kitchens. Trevelyan wrote: "The only way to prevent
people from becoming habitually dependent on the government is to bring
operations to a close" [1846] "too much has been done for the people.
. . we must now try what independent exertion can do" [1847]. He announced
that the government had already done everything it was going to do, even if
blight and starvation returned.

Blight indeed did return with the harvest of
October 1848, and it destroyed virtually the entire potato crop. And with no
government assistance at all, 1848-49 proved to be just as bad, if not worse,
1846-47. Hundreds of thousands more perished, routinely falling dead on the
streets; and in the extreme conditions of starvation and illness, their bodies
sometimes were left unburied for weeks at a time. One road inspector reported
burying 140 corpses scattered along his route. The magnitude of fatalities was
so overwhelming that authorities were unable to record the precise number of
deaths, but fatalities certainly approached one million.

Finally, with the 1849 harvest, the potato blight
and the famine were over. But Irish culture would never be the same. Long
standing animosity towards England now became a genuine hatred (called
"Anglophobia" by some commentators). Further, a grim "never
again" mentality, similar to that of Jewish survivors of Auschwitz a
century later, took root among famine survivors who felt embarrassment over a
culture that allowed family members to die passively rather than forcibly
expropriate food grown on Irish land which (prior to the British) was the common
property of society. In the century that followed, otherwise law abiding
Irishmen found themselves supporting anti-British terrorist groups, such as the
IRA.

In retrospect, no one can be blamed for the
potato blight itself, which like earthquake or flood, was a natural disaster;
but the British response was wrongheaded, indifferent and utterly devoid of
common sense and compassion. The tragedy likely could have been avoided entirely
by appropriate legislation which fed the populace with food grown for export.
Some commentators have equated the government's non-action with genocide, but a
better analysis would be a callous indifference towards an unsupportive ethnic
group long perceived as less than 100% human, coupled with an unwillingness to
spend taxpayer money on such undeserving and ungrateful people. (back
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After the devastating famine, lower and middle
class Irish-Catholics understandably became obsessed with mere survival. They
also became bitterly divided over the merits of peaceful politics. The
non-violent ("constitutional") philosophy of O'Connell -- that reform
could be achieved through Parliamentary action -- lost credibility*, which is
hardly surprising given Parliament's callous indifference during the famine.
Disillusioned pacifists tended to seek refuge in the Catholic Church, which
attained more influence than it had enjoyed for centuries, while a more violent
("revolutionary" or "physical force") segment of Irish
society gained support; they argued that the British government would never
respond to "constitutional" measures, and advocated violence to
effectuate reform. Then in 1878 a major farm crisis revived demands for genuine
land reform, which became a surprising reality through an alliance
between"constitutional" politics (under Charles Stewart Parnell) and
"revolutionary" intimidation of landlords (under Michael Davitt).

The violent element of society was exemplified by
a handful of zealous separatists, adherents of Wolf Tone who called themselves
"Republicans". These revolutionaries advocated an Irish Republic
totally separate and independent from England, to be achieved by any means
required, including physical force. Even during the height of the famine (1848),
a group called Young Ireland -- mostly former O'Connell supporters disillusioned
over the failure of working within the law -- had mounted an unsuccessful
"war of independence". One of the rebels, James Stephens (a
Protestant), avoided prison by faking his own funeral and fleeing to France; he
returned to reorganize Young Ireland into the "Fenian" movement
(1858), with one branch in Ireland (called the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or
"IRB") and another in the United States (called the Fenian
Brotherhood, later Clan na Gael). The Fenian strategy was to prepare secretly
for an armed rebellion to be launched when Britain found itself in a
debilitating war or otherwise vulnerable. While some Fenians were willing to
exploit issues such as land reform to broaden support for independence, the true
believers felt such issues were distractions. In 1867, the Fenians killed 30
Londoners while blowing up the outer wall of the Clerkenwell prison in an
unsuccessful prison break attempt; and they sponsored uprisings in 1865 and
1867. Although these Fenian endeavors were uniformly unsuccessful, they kept
alive the flame of revolutionary nationalism, not to mention the IRB itself.
Indeed, when finally the events of 1916-22 unfolded -- the Easter Rising, the
revolutionary government of Sinn Fein, the "troubles", civil war, and
near independence but with partition -- it was the Fenian IRB that violently
forced the issues. In James Stephens' own lifetime, however, the Fenians were
ineffectual except in garnering publicity.

The Fenians' failed risings of 1865 and 1867 had
one unintended consequence. In 1869, legislation was enacted abolishing the
tithe and repealing the laws that "established" the Anglican Church as
the official Church of Ireland (1869). Prime Minister William Gladstone later
acknowledged that the Fenians' violent activities precipitated the measure.

The Fenians' emphasis on violence was
dramatically at odds with O'Connell's insistence on peaceful political activity
within the law, even though both movements sought the same goal: greater
independence from England. From this conflict emerged a new two-pronged concept,
called the "New Departure", under which the "physical force"
(violence-tolerant) and "constitutional" (non-violent) factions would
not fight one another, but would cautiously cooperate, each in its own sphere,
towards the common goal.

Ironically, agricultural land reform -- the issue
which was regarded as a distraction by hard core Fenians, but which had obsessed
the populace since the 17th Century confiscations -- became the focus of the
"New Departure" strategy. In the winter of 1878-79, an economic crisis
-- brought on by crop failures, falling crop prices, and wet weather --
threatened the rural population with a disaster comparable to the famine. It
brought to the fore Michael Davitt, a Fenian Catholic, who formed an alliance
with Charles Stewart Parnell, a pro-Catholic legislator who was both a landlord
and a Protestant, to effectuate comprehensive land reform in Ireland. Davitt and
Parnell made strange bedfellows.

Michael Davitt (1846-1906) was the working class
son of a tenant farmer who had been evicted from his Mayo farm during the famine
because his potato crop failed and he could not pay his rent. The family moved
to Lankershire, England, where at the age of 11 Michael lost his right arm in a
machine while working in a cotton mill. A Catholic who was taught by a Wesleyan
schoolteacher, he accepted religious diversity as a way of life and identified
with all workers, English and Irish alike. Upon returning to Ireland, he became
a leader in the IRB, where his Fenian activities earned him a 15 year prison
sentence, of which he served seven. Unlike the more zealous Fenians, who saw
land reform as a distraction from the real issue of independence, Davitt had
genuine concern for the tenant farmers, and made agricultural land reform his
overriding issue. In 1879, two years after his release from prison (and in the
midst of the farm crisis of 1878-79), he founded the National Land League, which
became the less respectable prong of the "New Departure" dual approach
to agricultural land reform, i.e., the Land League was not above using
intimidation and threats of violence.

To achieve what he regarded as justice for tenant
farmers, Davitt's Land League used some of O'Connell's perfectly legal methods
-- mass meetings and brass bands -- plus societal ostracism. Occasionally, in
the tradition of the Whiteboys and the Defenders, it used intimidation and
violence or threats of violence. The League would identify landlords who had
been guilty of "abuses" -- unfair evictions or rack-renting -- then
focus public attention on these landlords, and organize the entire community to
refuse them all goods and services, including labor to work the farm.
"Grabbers" -- persons who became the new tenant farmer after an unfair
eviction -- were ostracized. In one spectacularly successful example, the League
used these tactics to bring one absentee landlord from Mayo to his knees.
Eventually, the landlord harvested his crop, but only after bringing in 50
laborers at a cost ten times the value of the crop. The landlord's on-site agent
was named "Boycott", whose name was added to the dictionary to
describe the League's tactics. The Land League had other impressive successes,
but absent the emergence of Parnell as their champion in Parliament, it is
unlikely that the Land League ever could have effectuated permanent or
widespread reform.

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) was by
inheritance an affluent Protestant landlord, but his heritage was hardly
pro-British. On his fathers' side, his great grandfather, an incorruptible
member of the 1800 Irish Parliament, had voted against the Union. On his
mother's side, his ancestors had emigrated from Belfast to America in the 1770s,
and his grandfather had fought against England in the War of 1812. An
intransigent nationalist, he was elected to the British Parliament in 1875 from
a largely Catholic district in Meath. Initially, he made his name by obstructing
other legislation to gain consideration of home rule for Ireland. Then Davitt
persuaded him to become the parliamentary champion of land reform, i.e., the
second prong of the Davitt's New Departure strategy. Paradoxically, then, this
affluent Protestant landlord became the leader of the land reform movement, as
well as the Home Rule movement. To the great mass of peasant and middle class
citizens, Catholic and Presbyterian alike, he shortly became one of the most
beloved men in Ireland. Among affluent Protestants, of course, he was considered
a traitor to his class. In 1880, with massive grass roots assistance from
Davitt's Land League, a slate of Parnell supporters was elected to Parliament,
and Parnell supplanted Isaac Butt as chairman of the Irish party.

The Davitt-Parnell alliance paid dividends almost
immediately. Prodded by Parnell, Gladstone and his Liberal government
successfully pushed through the Land Act of 1881, incorporating the long
standing demands of tenant farmers known as the "three Fs" (1)
"fair rents" (legal review of rent fairness by an independent
tribunal), (2) "fixity of tenure" (protection against arbitrary
eviction), and (3) "freedom of sale" (the right of a tenant farmer to
transfer or sell his leasehold in the farm). The 1881 Act paved the way for
additional reforms in 1891 and 1896; and much later, after Parnell, Davitt and
Gladstone were all dead, the Wyndham land act (1906) completed the reforms by
permitting tenants to purchase their farms on easy terms over 68 years, while
offering a bonus to selling landlords. The vast majority of Irishmen depended on
farming for their livelihood, and for them it is virtually impossible to
overemphasize the importance of these victories, particularly the 1881 Act. For
over 270 years they had been agitating unsuccessfully for land reform. Now the
New Departure, with Davitt and Parnell playing key roles, won had for Irish who
worked the land, Catholics and Presbyterians alike, their first genuine
bread-and-butter victory in 270 years.

Now the political winds began to shift strongly
in Parnell's favor. Parliament enacted a "franchise act" expanding the
electorate throughout Britain; in Ireland, it added some 500,000 new voters to
the rolls, most of whom were less affluent Catholics who supported Parnell. And
since land reform had largely been achieved, the Land League permitted itself to
be transformed into a highly efficient political machine under Parnell's
control.

Parnell returned to his earlier goal: A
subordinate ("Home Rule") parliament for Ireland. The idea was not
new. It had been raised in the 1840s both by O'Connell and by Young Ireland, and
had been pursued unsuccessfully by Isaac Butt (Parnell's predecessor as leader
of the Irish Party). In the 1880s was certain to be killed by the House of
Lords. Nonetheless, with Parnell behind it, Home Rule became the highly divisive
and defining issue of the 1885 election. Conservatives opposed it as the first
step towards breaking up the empire, but the most passionate resistance came
from Protestants, particularly Ulster Presbyterians, because any Home Rule
Parliament was certain to be dominated by Catholics. The election inflamed
dormant religious antagonisms, polarizing anti-Home Rule "Unionists"
(generally Protestant) from pro-Home Rule "Nationalists" (generally
Catholic), a split that eventually (1910) evolved into private armies. But in
1885, Parnell's Irish party won 86 seats, exactly the separation between
Liberals (335) and Conservatives (249). A deal was struck: Gladstone announced
support for Home Rule, and with Irish support became prime minister for the
third time. But Gladstone's Liberal Party split over his 1886 Home Rule Bill,
and it was defeated in Commons, a defeat that was widely viewed as a temporary
postponement.

Parnell seemed politically invincible until 1890,
when a divorce court revealed that he had been "living in sin" with
the wife of William Henry O'Shea. Gladstone forced the Irish party to choose
between Parnell's leadership and his own support for a second Home Rule bill. A
majority in the Irish Party, and the Catholic bishops, turned against Parnell,
who took his case to the country, but in doing so he overburdened his precarious
health and died soon after. Gladstone's second Home Rule passed the House of
Commons but was killed in the House of Lords (1893). Parliament (but not the
Irish Party) then placed Home Rule on the back burner.

With the fall of Parnell and the failure of Home
Rule, the passion went out of Irish politics, and there ensued a 20 year period
of tranquility plus modest progress for Ireland (1890-1910). After considerable
infighting, leadership of the Irish party eventually fell to the docile John
Redmond, while successive British governments adopted the policy of placating
Ireland in an attempt to "kill Home Rule with kindness". The
government spent extraordinary sums in Ireland on two new colleges, plus public
works projects such as a railroad to western Ireland. Most importantly, the
government passed the final piece of comprehensive land reform, the
aforementioned Wyndham Land Act (1903), which permitted tenants to purchase
their farms on easy terms over 68 years.

In abandoning politics and rebellion, the Irish
populace turned to a nostalgic study of "Irish Ireland", an
exploration of their ethnic and national identity. The Gaelic League was founded
in 1893 by Douglas Hyde, later President of the Irish Free State, to revive the
Gaelic language and culture. The Gaelic Athletic Association, formed in 1884,
promoted traditional Irish games -- hurling and Irish football -- in place of
"foreign" games. William Butler Yeats, acknowledged as the greatest
English language poet of his era, spearheaded a literary revival emphasizing
Irish roots and national identity. A series of periodicals advocated a return to
Gaelic roots. None of this was overtly political, yet it dove-tailed with the
trendy new concept among political scientists that a separate cultural identity
justified carving new states out of existing larger states. Thus this
"Irish Ireland" movement later became a critical factor in turning
world opinion in favor of Ireland in its quest for independence.

One of the few overtly political manifestations
of the "Irish Ireland" movement was the formation of Sinn Fein
("we ourselves") in 1905 by Arthur Griffith (1872-1922). Sinn Fein was
primarily an Irish nationalist movement, but it also functioned as a minor and
largely unsuccessful political party. Under Griffith's direction, it advocated a
dual monarchy along Austro-Hungarian lines, all to be achieved by passive
resistance rather than physical force. Meanwhile, the Irish Republican
Brotherhood (IRB) was infiltrating the nationalist and separatist groups,
including Sinn Fein, still waiting for the opportunity to foment rebellion if
England should find itself in a debilitating war. (back
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